A long run focus of labour market research has been on understanding the reasons why women receive, on average, a lower hourly wage than men. A range of explanations have been proposed including gender differences in characteristics that impact upon wages (e.g., human capital, caring responsibilities), gender differences in the types of jobs held, and discrimination in the workplace.

One potential explanation for part of the gender wage gap is that there are gender differences in attempts to negotiate over wages and the success of such attempts. Despite there being strong evidence of gender differences in bargaining behaviour and differences in the responses to bargaining by men and women, there is little empirical evidence on the extent to which there are gender differences in bargaining over wages and the impact of any differences on the gender wage gap.

This paper uses data from the Fair Work Commission’s 2014 Australian Workplace Relation study (AWRS) linked Employer- Employee data set to estimate the  contribution that individual level negotiation of wage/salary between the employee and employer makes to the gender wage gap. Preliminary analysis of the 2014 AWRS reveals that men are more likely to attempt to gain a better wage/salary through negotiation with their manager and are more likely to be successful if they attempt to negotiate than are women.